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Who you are is who you are (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/tumblr@lemmy.world
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[–] 40 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Zizek says that our online persona is our real persona, because it doesn't have the weights and limitations of our physical bodies and can be free to express as itself.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    I don’t know, this sounds very mind body duality to me but I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume such a duality exists?

    I think being removed from legal or social ramifications enables a lot of misbehavior. If there were social or legal ramifications for online behavior, then maybe people would behave consistently online and offline. In fact, you see that with places like LinkedIn.

    Before social media, “trolling” was a game of inciting reactions without malicious intent. IIRC the norm was to induce anger or reaction or exhaustion without using violent language, like death threats etc. But of course people always behave stupidly for any number of reasons! The death threat people, from my old school pov, are not OG trolls. The death threat people are politically motivated actors or sociopaths.

    So I think it’s less about being real online vs fake, and more about what you’re doing vs everyone else. If you’re looking for a cozy time online, then someone coming in to incite reaction by being contrarian (because that’s interesting to them) would seem aggravating to you, and that’s just unkind of the contrarian person (or troll).

    If you’re shitposting and assume everyone is just a troll trolling trolls (and that’s true), then all interactions are performative and a game. However this cannot apply anymore because the rules of engagement on the web have changed, and there a lot more people online now with different needs and different expectations. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being inclusive. The chans etc. are filled with glowies or nation state actors, so it’s not worth engaging in old school trolling in any form because you just provide convenient camouflage for people with malicious intent or political agendas.

    So in short no, I don’t think body vs non body is the reason for differences in irl or online behavior.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    If you’re shitposting and assume everyone is just a troll trolling trolls (and that’s true), then all interactions are performative and a game. However this cannot apply anymore because the rules of engagement on the web have changed, and there a lot more people online now with different needs and different expectations. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being inclusive.

    Maybe I just have an old school mentality about this, but wouldn't this be kinda, a better stance to take, even if you were looking for a cozy time online? Would it not be the more accommodating position? A troll is easier to dismiss out of hand for being bad faith, rather than assuming someone who's good faith, but inflammatory, has entered into your space and decided to talk shit and incite reaction. One of those cuts it off before you spend more thought process on it. Thought terminating cliches are useful sometimes, for controlling your own behavior and not engaging with that which you do not wish to seriously engage. Which, I think, is something we need more much of, online. The fallacies are fine, it's just that they are meant to be helpful to you, personally, rather than being a kind of, moral creed to which we all must conform, a creed that must be enforced, if not by strict rule, than by a kind of unspoken social norm, by chastisement.

    I think probably it's also weird that people comment like "this person is a troll" or "this person is a bot" as like, a kind of weird flag that's supposed to be helpful, but then they expect not to get engaged with after they post that, by the poster. I'm not super convinced the people doing that "flagging" are always doing it in good faith, though, anyways.

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